Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 4:33 PM
302d

Computational Biology Using Order Parameters And Reaction Coordinates

Ravi Radhakrishnan, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, 120 Hayden Hall, 3320 Smithwalk, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Before I graduated from Keith's group (i.e., before he signed my thesis) Keith told me "if you are interested in an academic position, I have three words for you-- Multi Scale Modeling". When I gave my first talk on computational biology after I became a faculty member, Keith came up to me (rather disappointed) and said: "So you are doing Bio now, but atleast you get to do some statistical mechanics". So this talk is a little tribute to Keith on how we employ Statistical Mechanics and Multiscale Modeling to complicate complex biological systems even further.

I will present some recent results on how to utilize molecular dynamics, coarse-grained Monte Carlo, and Ginzburg-Landau simulations (things I learned in Keith's group) in understanding signaling through receptors in a cancer cell.